Actually you don’t understand the statute.
The President is NOT the one who can declare what is and isn’t a foreign terrorist organization.
He can direct that the process be started (via EO), but the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Attorney General, is the one who makes the actual designation, and under a very proscribed set of conditions, and he MUST declare his intentions to Congress seven days before it’s done.
And Congress has the power to revoke this designation at any time.
Oh and by the way, designating an organization a foreign terrorist organization STILL does not give the President the authority to kill members of that organization with impunity.
The designation of a group as a foreign terrorist org allows the US to freeze the assets of that org, prosecute anyone that provides that org with material support, and slap immigration restrictions upon known members of the org.
They may use lethal force ONLY when the terrorist org is doing something that will cause an immediate or imminent threat.
It stretches the meanings of these words beyond all credulity to claim a drug boat thousands of miles away is an immediate or imminent threat to the US.
And when engaged in these kinds of operations, the laws of armed conflict prevail, even if a state of war doesn’t exist.
So no, you can’t sink a shipwrecked boat that has survivors hanging off it. That is absolutely an illegal order given to the military that should have been refused.
Hence, Hegseth and Trump setting up Bradley the way they are setting him up…even while praising him, they are set to put the knife in his back.
